Dear Lorraine
In the fifties, I grew up in a small Midland village, where every child at the village school wore a gaberdine mac. They were always double breasted, and the boys wore them open at the neck, with the other buttons fastened and the belt sometimes done up. In winter or on wet days, a cap or sometimes a balaclava would be worn but the top button was never fastened. To do so was a "girly" thing to do, and resulted in being ostracised or "sent to Coventry" for a period of a day or more. Girls nearly always had their coats buttoned to the neck, and in the bad weather they wore their hoods, and often a scarf, with the ends thrown back over the shoulders, or tied behind, so the scark covered their neck and chin, and sometimes the whole lower half of the face. It was customary for the boys to call them names and be generally rude to them about being done up like Eskimos. What a lovely bunch we were!
My Mum had other ideas, and I was always sent to school buttoned to the neck. As soon as I was at the end of the garden path, the coat was unbuttoned, and usually worn loose all the way to school and home egain, and I was often caned for it. Only when we went anywhere on the bus together did I have to wear my mac fully buttoned up, and I hated the embarrassment of it, though when I was at home on my own in the holidays (Mum used to work as a cleaner in the next village) I would wear my mac buttoned to the neck for the sheer pleasure of it. It was only in public I had to keep up the hard "Boyish" image.
When I was about eleven, we were going one day to visit my Aunt and cousin Linda in Birmingham, about an hour away by bus. Linda was a few months older than me, and was at the Secondary School, wearing a smart uniform with a green gaberdine. The last time I had seen her, she had dressed in the unifrom, with the mac, and announced that she was to be allowed to wear it unbuttoned at the neck for the first few weeks, as a sign that she was now a Big Girl. This seemed to be a common rite of passage for girls at that time - at least locally. I was dressed in my only wearable pair of trousers and a clean jumper (money was very tight, and Mum used to bring home items of school uniform being discarded by the children of her much wealthier employers), and had been sent to the local shop on an errand - in my fully buttoned up gaberdine. As susal, I unbuttoned it, but on the way back from the shop, a car passing me went through a muddy puddle, and covered me in mud and water - all over my clothes and the inside of my coat as well. Trouble ahead.
When I got in, instead of the expected thrashing, I was told to strip off all my clothes, and Mum then handed me a clean vest and pants, and a shirt and socks, but I had no trousers. She then took my old outgrown gaberdine from behind the kitchen door, and stuffed me into it, buttoned it right up, buckled the belt, and then produced a needle and thread, and proceeded to sew up the buttonholes. I protested, tearfully, that I couldn't go out dressed like that, at which Mum went upstairs and came down with a brown gaberdine, which I recognised as having belonged to the daughter of one of her employers. I was again pushed into it, and it was buttoned up, on the left hand or girl's side, and belted. It was a lot longer than the one underneath, and covered the tops of my socks, so no-one could see what I was wearing or not wearing underneath. Then to my horror, she pulled the hood up over my head, and tied the tapes under my chin, and then took them behind and knotted them behind my neck. Finally she produced a long brown scarf which she tied round my neck and chin, knotted it at the back, and pulled it up to cover my mouth and nose.
"That will teach you what the gils feel like when you laugh at them for being well wrapped up" was her only comment.
The journey to Auntie Hilda's was uneventful - we met no-one from my school, and we arrived in time for lunch, as planned. Linda, of course, found the whole affair hilarious, especially when she found that I wearing a second mac with no trousers, and that I couldn't take it off. After lunch, the Mums decided that Linda and I should go out to do some errands, and I had to have my brown mac back on again, buttoned to the neck, while Linda really rubbed salt into the wounds of my discomfort. "Mummy, I can wear my mac open at the neck, without my hood up, can't I? Auntie Jean, Jamie has to keep his mac buttoned up all the time doesn't he, and he has to wear his hood as well. I must make sure he keeps his scarf over his mouth and nose, mustn't I? I'll tke care of him, because I'm a Big Girl now, aren't I? We mustn't let him catch cold, must we?"
We went out, Linda having strict instructions that any attempt by me to undo any part of my clothing must be resisted and reported back, and we went out. Of course, we met several of her friends, who were all introduced to me, and told I was being punished for being naughty, and that I had another mac on under the brown one - and she pulled back the skirt of the brown coat to reveal the old navy blue one underneath. Her friends thought it great fun, and they told Linda several times that they thought my hood looked a bit loose, or my scarf seemed to be slipping, so Linda carefully retied my hood tapes behind, and pulled my scarf well up, a little tighter each time. She told the whole story to our Mums when we got in, and later, when we were going home and I had to be put into my brown gaberdine again, she insisted on tying my hood and scarf on. Her final aprting shot before we left was "That's for all the times you laughed at me for wearing my coat buttoned up, and my hood - and for all the times you've done it to the girls in your school as well."
I had learned my lesson, and was very careful not to mock the girls again, though I still wore my mac with the top button undone when I was out of Mum's sight. A few months later, however, I heard that I had gained a place at a Grammar School in Birmingham, and so I was not subjected to the peer pressure in the same way. On the first day, I put on my gaberdine raincoat, buttoned it up and belted it, and then decided to fasten the top button. It was a full-sized button, as against the small buttons at the neck of most gaberdines, and I decided that this was a sign that it was meant to be fastened up at all times. I used to think that the small button on my old coat was only for occasional use if at all. I went through the first two years, wearing my gaberdine every day from September to Easter fully buttoned to the neck, and open necked in the summer, except when it rained. On a few occasions when I had to go out with Mum in bad weather, I even asked if I could wear the brown hooded one which still hung in the wardrobe in her room, but she always refused. "It's a girl's coat" was her reply. I wore it during the holidays, though, in the house, and I have to say that it gave me a lifelong love of gaberdine raincoats which I still retain - and I have never laughed at a girl in a fully buttoned-up gaberdine mac since!
James
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